


Juniper Lips

by Lokisgame



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s06e03 Triangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-10 07:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11687373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokisgame/pseuds/Lokisgame
Summary: The juniper bitterness of gin fights for domination with sweetness of tonic and all she wants is to wash away the taste of him.





	1. Chapter 1

The juniper bitterness of gin fights for domination with sweetness of tonic and all she wants is to wash away the taste of him.  
The man kissed her, a complete stranger, she should do more than just slug him, he deserved a solid kick in the ass. Good he thrown himself over board, otherwise things would escalate.  
The taste in her mouth reminds her of grapefruit, she misses sunshine, the sweet lazy afternoons in her sister’s Californian garden. Good thing this trip is almost over, she’s been on this assignment for too long, she needs a man, it’s been far too long for her.  
The memory of the man’s lips turns sweet again, so soft, so sure, fine line between confidence and desperation. He kissed like someone who had nothing to lose and only one last thing to gain.  
If he hadn’t thrown himself overboard, she’d have him, clean and simple, never mind the protocol. She’s been following rules for too long. Undercover’s always a challenge, but to be cooped up with this cold blooded scientist, he did nothing for her. The truth was, she missed Mo, Mo knew how to please her. Mo was crazy, but he loved her, with his lush lips and skillful hands. A simple communications officer in Washington, no shining bright career before him, cooped up in the basement, listening to communication chatter and encrypting secret messages to win the war, because nothing else mattered. He was dedicated, to his small part in the effort, and she respected that, do what you can or more, never less. She was good at her job and she did just that, he did the same, and they respected each other. It meant more to her than all the sweet talking of posh intelligence officers put together, starting with the Fleming boy back in England, who talked big but had very little to say.  
She loved her crazy, low profile Mo, lanky and brooding, and his deep voice. She loved his voice. She missed laying with him in her small flat hot and spent from three consecutive orgasms he gave her, she missed his skilled mouth, and fingers and cock. Her friends always blushed at the word, cock; nice, thick, double digits in length, ready to split you in half in the best of ways. She missed Mo, his green eyes and soft chest hair. She missed his stories of ghosts in the ether, of secret communications in languages no one knew how to translate, dismissed as gibberish by his supervisors, and recited to her in the darkness by virtue of his extraordinary memory. She missed his whiskey kiss and his smell. She’d jump his bones right now if she could, but she can't. The assignment has precedent. Soon though, soon she’ll have him, just a few weeks, and she’ll be back home.  
The man, Mulder, called her a weird name. Scully. He was so sure she was her. Who was this woman, that his dying wish was to kiss her? Poor sap, he’s probably dead now, I wonder if his Scully knew what she was missing. Probably not, otherwise he wouldn’t be so desperate. He had Mo’s lips, she missed Mo, and the darn fool had to remind her of it.


	2. Chapter 2

She flung herself into his arms on the platform, ignoring the cane, ignoring the crowd.  
“I don’t wanna wrestle” he chuckled when only by virtue of his size, he managed to break her flight. He had to lean down, his free arm tight around her waist, pulling her in, face in her neck, breathing in, thanking the God of his father she was back, safe and sound “not in public” he whispered against her skin, feeling her giggle.  
“Mo Luder left his den to come and greet me, this is a happy day” she let him go noticing the cane, finally “but only for me apparently.”  
He showed her the umbrella  
“I saw the weather this morning and though I’ll come pick you up" he lifted the lapel of his uniform jacket and she saw a bar of chocolate in the inside pocket “I come bearing gifts”.  
“I could marry you right now” she joked, standing on tiptoes to kiss the corner of his lips.  
“One of these days, I’ll hold you to that” he threw her small duffle bag over one shoulder and gave her his arm “come on, your place or mine?”  
“Where’s the food?”  
“We’ll pick something up on the way”  
“My place then” she looked up from under her lashes “we could both use a nice hot bath”  
“Sally, you read my mind" he smiled warmly.  
"And Mo" she put both her arms around his waist "happy birthday". 

It rained buckets when they arrived at her apartment. Wet pavement was slippery but, ever the gentleman, he refused to give her her luggage. The rooms were clean just as she left them, but a vase with fresh flowers stood in the middle of the table and the air was free of the stale smell of home empty for weeks.  
"Mo" she left the food on the kitchen table and went back to him, watching as he fumbled with the umbrella, her bag and his walking stick "you've been here"  
"Someone had to water your plants" he agreed without looking up.  
"Thank you" she took the wet umbrella from him and dropped it unceremoniously to the floor thus doing exactly what he was trying to avoid "did you do groceries too?" the bag thumped on the floor next to their feet.  
"Only essentials" he mused as she started to unbutton his jacket, one button at a time; with her father and brother in the navy she was raised to respect the uniform, and she knew how to be deliciously serious about it "milk, coffee, bagels, cream cheese" she reached into his inside pocket, hand caressing his chest while at it.  
"And chocolate" she smiled.  
"That's for later" he smiled, lifting her chin with one finger. She looked up his crystal clear green eyes bright with joy and mischief.  
Capturing his lips felt like true homecoming, his broad shoulders and arms locking around her, pulling her flush against his chest, felt more like home than these walls ever have. If home was where your heart was, her home was right there, even though he wasn't her husband, they didn’t promise each other anything, to never-ending displeasure of their families.  
For a long time the only sound was the rustle of clothes and quickened breaths, gasps and lips moving against each other as he walked her backwards to the bedroom. Their holy ground, where they were never alone and war and sadness had no reason to linger. 

His semi-old injury, a stupidly fractured knee in the middle of the fourth inning of the 102nd division's baseball playoffs, kept him state side at a desk job in communications center. She knew his education and brilliance were more useful at that desk than in the trenches, and if it kept him safe, she had nothing agains it. When she was on assignment, she could rest easy, knowing that he’s probably waiting for her, and even if not, that at least he was safe. They'd both accepted that trust didn't make you less worried about the one you love, and when parting one said ‘be careful’, the other heard ‘come back, I love you’

When she landed on the bed and he knelt before her, when wet tongue touched her most sensitive flesh, when he pulled her down, gripping roughly the hem of her skirt, her sweet Mo became a new animal, he became more. 

“How’s your leg?”  
“Never better” Mo smiled kissing her forehead, arms wrapped around her, skin on skin. The neighbors stopped talking about them, but at first, being unmarried, she in a uniform, him coming and going at the oddest hours, they were a scandal.  
The rain played on the window pane as they laid in bed, his fingers tracing her back as she told him about the bizarre things that happened on Queen Anne, about the strange man she met.  
“You think he was right?”  
“I don’t know, I just hope we’ll live long enough to find out.”  
“About the peace thing, we haven’t even joined the war yet.”  
“That’s exactly why”  
She felt him move and let him go, watching as he walked to the living room buck naked. He might limp for the rest of his life, but that didn’t stop him from swimming almost every day and having body to show for it.  
“I’ve got a letter” he said coming back after retrieving the envelope from his jacket pocket.  
“From?” She said sitting up with a pillow behind her back.  
“From Alan” he replied smiling, climbing back to bed and resting his head in her lap.  
“You haven’t opened it?” She watched as he ripped of one edge of the envelope.  
“I was waiting for you in case it’s…” the letter was a single page covered with a jumble of letters and numbers “yeah, it’s encrypted”  
Sally laughed as she looked at the page he handed her. “Can’t you do anything like normal people anymore?”  
“Where’s the fun in that?” He took the letter back and she found a pencil and a note pad the drawer of her bedside table.  
“Any idea what kind of code it is?”  
“Probably a simple substitution code, without spaces from the look of it, so write down the alphabet, please”  
“But there are numbers here, what the numbers stand for?”  
“Some letters are replaced by numbers to make the code a little harder to break”  
“But how do you know which ones’ are numbers and what letter is the first letter of the code?” He really had the weirdest friends.  
“Look, there’s no 9 or 0 so it’s only eight letters, and the letter is addressed to me, so you can assume I know which letters to chose”  
He rolled over and, propped up on his elbows, took the notepad from her, writing a letter of his own under each of hers.  
“1 is for S, 2 for A, 3 is L, 4 is Y; 5 is U, 6 is D, 7 is E and 8 for R” he filled out the rest of the code and ripped out the page handing it to her “I’ll read and you’ll help me decode it”  
She sat speechless for a moment and he looked up at her. Sally stared at the piece of paper, smiling at the last 8 letters.  
“What?”  
“The keyword to your letter is Sally Luder?”  
“I know, it’s not very strong” she snorted at his lame excuse, but was warmed by the sentiment anyway. 

They worked through the letter, word by word, sentence by sentence. Alan was confident the design he was working on will work, his idea of a machine that could make calculations faster than humans was fascinating.  
Mo blushed a little looking through the unintelligible jumble of letters and numbers and because he learned fast he knew the next part became a little personal. Not that he kept secrets from her, but Alan wasn’t one to beat around the bush when he had a point to make. He felt she needed a little context before the last part.  
“Alan, he’s not very good with social interaction, but last time he wrote, he noted that most of my correspondence revolves around you”  
“You told him about me?” She’d be surprised if it wasn’t for the earlier sweet reveal.  
“I told him how you decided to postpone your residency and joined the army, because you thought that if you have to fight petty men anyway, it should be for a just cause”  
“That’s an interesting way of putting it” she smiled.  
“All I’m trying to say, he might seem a little forward”  
“You want to do it yourself?” She tried to hand him the page with the code.  
“I don’t need it” Mo shook his head and started to read out loud  
_‘My friend, the woman you hold in such high regard will without a doubt be a challenge worthy of a lifetime. Marry her, life’s too short to wait, especially now.’_  
In the silence that fell, only rain played it’s soft music on the window pane, Mo set the letter aside and looked up at her again.  
“I know it’s my birthday” he started cautiously “and I don’t want to make you feel like you need to give me your answer as a gift, but I want you to know, that I love you, only you, and it will be an honor…”  
He didn’t finish, he didn’t have to. Sally crushed her lips to his and silenced his words as well as his doubts.  
When he pulled her down and back into his arms, the rain stopped and sun came out, painting a rare October rainbow over Georgetown. 

They got married on Christmas Eve, 1939. After the war, Mo and Sally Luder moved to Chilmark, Massachusetts, where he opened a book store and she worked as a doctor at the local hospital. 

One day, she pulled back the curtain in the examination room and picked up the chart of a small boy, his mother pacing restlessly with a baby girl in her arms. She read the name and froze for one moment, Fox Mulder, age 6.  
“Good morning” she collected herself quickly “my name is doctor Luder, what seems to be the problem?”  
The boy’s mother started talking as she examined his arm. She looked at his elbow, scraped raw, slight swelling around the wrist, then she took his small hand in hers and he winced, biting his lip and fighting tears.  
“Does this hurt?” He nodded, sniffling softly. “Can you wiggle your fingers for me?” The boy moved his fingers with a bit of effort and wincing, “now make a fist” he balled up his little palm, obviously in pain, but managed it.  
“Okay Fox” she smiled at him letting go of his hand “we’ll do an X-ray, but I don’t think anything’s broken”  
The mother calmed considerably at that and followed the nurse who took the boy to have his picture taken. 

He looked a little like David, her own little boy, thick brown unruly hair, green eyes, mouth like her husband. Little Fox might be her David’s brother, and even if he was a teenager now, a mother never forgot the face of her child.  
She remembered the man with a weird name she met years ago, the man who claimed to come from the future. The man who kissed like her husband, and loved someone so fiercely he was ready to jump into the abyss to get back to her or die trying. Could everything he said be true?

An hour later, the boy came back with his mother, breaking her reverie. Little Fox was done crying, she took the picture from his mother, and as expected it was nothing more than a slight sprain.  
“Okay, nothing’s broken, a little bandage will suffice this time.” She found bandages in one of the drawers and sat next to her patient to wrap up his little arm.  
“Your mom told me you fell of your bike” she said softly, trying to distract him from the pain “is that true?”  
The boy winced and jumped, but after a moment he shook his head “I jumped of a tree”  
“FOX how many times have I told you” his mother started to raise her voice, but Sally silenced her with a gesture.  
“Why did you climb the tree Fox?” She asked him softly, looping the fabric around his palm and wrist.  
“There was a baby cat trapped there, she couldn’t come down” the boy sniffed, scared a little of his father!s rage once he came back home, but not regretting trying to help the ginger kitten, even if she scratched him a little “someone had to help her”  
“And was it worth it?” She asked him earnestly.  
The boy nodded solemnly, eyes glistening with tears but his little face set, filled with conviction and readiness to take responsibility for his actions. In that moment, in those bright green eyes, she saw the echo of a man, this little boy would become.  
She nodded with appreciation, finishing binding the soft brace around his little hand.  
“Alright, this should do it” she said helping the boy get down from the examination table and looked him in the eye, resting one hand on top of his head “No more jumping of things, can you do that for me Fox?”  
The boy nodded with a smile, some unspoken communication passing between them, a silent understanding of responsibility and pride.  
Fox Mulder left with his mother and baby sister, looking over one shoulder and waving his uninjured hand to the nice lady doctor, ready to save the world, one ginger kitten at a time.


End file.
